Research from Horizon Aircraft shows remote Canadian communities concerned about supply of critical goods

Ris­ing wor­ries about the secu­ri­ty of sup­plies of crit­i­cal goods and med­i­cine is threat­en­ing the sur­vival of remote com­mu­ni­ties in Cana­da, new research shows.

Two out of five peo­ple liv­ing in remote com­mu­ni­ties are con­sid­er­ing a move to major towns and cities due to wor­ries about sup­plies, with a third plan­ning to move out of their rur­al areas with­in two years.

The study by Cana­di­an-based man­u­fac­tur­er of hybrid eVTOL aer­i­al vehi­cles Hori­zon Air­craft found that near­ly six out of 10 (58%) are con­cerned about the long-term sur­vival of their com­mu­ni­ty.

Gov­ern­ment data fur­ther shows that near­ly one in nine Cana­di­ans are classed as liv­ing in remote areas, which accounts for 74.6% of the Cana­di­an land­mass. A poten­tial solu­tion is to intro­duce air taxis or eVTOL air­craft.

Rough­ly 60% of peo­ple ques­tioned in remote com­mu­ni­ties said they would stay in their com­mu­ni­ty if air taxis improved the deliv­ery of sup­plies and made trav­el eas­i­er. Around 18% were unde­cid­ed and 22% said it wouldn’t influ­ence their deci­sion.

More than half (55%) of res­i­dents are con­cerned about the deliv­ery of crit­i­cal goods and med­i­cine to their com­mu­ni­ty and the same num­ber of peo­ple say there has been a drop in the avail­abil­i­ty of sup­plies in the past two years.

Around 36% say they are becom­ing more con­cerned about secu­ri­ty of sup­plies and blame a com­bi­na­tion of prices ris­ing for the goods, the ris­ing cost of trans­port, and Gov­ern­ment bud­get restric­tions for the issues.

Up to 86% ques­tioned said the ris­ing cost of goods means they can no longer afford them, while 71% point to Gov­ern­ment spend­ing, and 63% say the cost of fuel is mak­ing deliv­er­ies more expen­sive.

Bran­don Robin­son, CEO of Hori­zon Air­craft, said: “The ris­ing cost of liv­ing in gen­er­al and the increas­ing price of fuel pose a real threat to remote com­mu­ni­ties, whose sur­vival is depen­dent on secure and reli­able sup­plies.

“Inno­va­tions such as air taxis can play a major role in secur­ing the future of remote com­mu­ni­ties for those who want to con­tin­ue liv­ing there. We believe they have the poten­tial to rev­o­lu­tionise the way peo­ple trav­el between remote com­mu­ni­ties and pro­vide a depend­able means for the trans­porta­tion of car­go, such as vital sup­plies and med­i­cine, to such loca­tions.”

In April, Hori­zon Air­craft suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed ini­tial tran­si­tion flight test­ing of its Cavorite X5 half-scale eVTOL pro­to­type at Ontario Tech University’s ACE Cli­mat­ic Wind Tun­nel in Cana­da.

Hori­zon Air­craft com­pletes wind tun­nel tran­si­tion flight test­ing